2010: “Innovator in residence” Wayne McGregor brings his London company, Random Dance, to work on a new dance; faculty and students study the neuroscience of the creative process.

Spring, 2011: ArtPower! launches the biannual “Wonderland International Contemporary Dance Festival” in collaboration with UCSD’s Department of Theatre and Dance and Sushi.

Martin “Marty” Wollesen punctuates everything with exclamation points! That goes for UCSD ArtPower!, which he directs! He even puts the wowie punctuation after his signature on emails!

Wollesen initially started using exclamation points when he was working for Stanford University’s Lively Arts program. He doesn’t really remember why. But when he came here as artistic director of the performance program at the University of California San Diego, the personal quirk turned into a statement of purpose.

“We were creating ArtPower! and creating a logo to represent the sense of fun and excitement, that the arts were thrilling,” he says. “The exclamation point came up as a way to express that. … It’s one of those little ways to remind us on a daily basis that we’re engaged in exciting work.”

It’s been an exciting seven years since Wollesen arrived at UCSD in 2004, topped by the 2008 opening of the Loft performance space and wine bar. “There’s no venue like it on a college campus,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of interest from (other universities) in duplicating it.”

This season, he is presenting 32 performance and film events. The lineup for the rest of this month is typical of ArtPower!’s multidisciplinary international fare: Trashtalk Theatre 3000, billed as “an interactive cinema experience”; Israel’s Vertigo Dance Company; the Vienna-based Hugo Wolff Quartet; the eclectic chamber ensemble Ethel; and a “Foovie” (food and a movie) featuring the film “La Graine et Le Mulet.” (Performances sponsored by the Loft are also listed on the ArtPower! website.)

Given the impossibility of being an expert in so many genres, Wollesen describes his job as a process of “constantly not-knowing.”

And he relishes the uncertainty.

“I love the new discovery and change and even the risk and fear that come with being in completely different environments,” he says.

Wollesen has a lifelong experience in encountering the new. His father’s job with a transistor manufacturer took the family overseas, and he attended elementary school in Singapore and high school in the Philippines.